


The Cuckoo in the Nest

by ishafel



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 01:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All their lives, Sybilla loved one of her sons-- one of her children-- more than the other, and set the two of them at each others' throats when it suited her.  And now they are grown old, and wise, and almost friends.  Richard has sons, and Francis, daughters, and though she loves them all the grandchild Sybilla loves best is not hers at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cuckoo in the Nest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/gifts).



All their lives, Sybilla loved one of her sons-- one of her children-- more than the other, and set the two of them at each others' throats when it suited her. And now they are grown old, and wise, and almost friends. Richard has sons, and Francis, daughters, and though she loves them all the grandchild Sybilla loves best is not hers at all.

The boy that prowls her still-room is, like Francis, small and blond and clever, but there is none of Francis's delicacy to him, mind or spirit or body. “Come, Khaireddin, and sit down,” she tells him, and he heels like a well-trained hound.

But he smiles at her, too, as if he wants her to know that he came because he wanted to and not because she wished it. His eyes are his father's, dark blue as the sea; his nature is like Philippa's, straightforward and fierce-- like Joleta's. The others persist in hoping, but Sybilla knows whose son he is.

She loves him despite it. She teaches him, as she taught Richard and Francis and Eloise: he is as quick, as clever. His small hands are easy on the hilt of a sword, the rein of a fine horse, the carved arch of a bow-- as easy as on a quill, the pages of a manuscript, the strings of a lute.

Today's lesson is on medicinals, and she lays the herbs in their small bundles before him on the table, and shows him which is which. Poison is a woman's work, but Sybilla is practical. There is no land waiting for Khaireddin, no title, nothing but what Francis may choose to give him. Everything she can teach him, he may need. Bastards, like women, have a hard time of it.

“See the notches in the leaves,” she says, and the boy nods. “A spoonful will send a big man to sleep, so that he never wakes. A good thing to have on hand, sometimes, but dangerous, Khaireddin, and not to be used lightly.”

He makes notes in the herbal she gave him, flame-bright head bent close to the table, and she almost puts out a hand to stroke his hair. But he is growing too big for such affection, and she has never been the sort of woman it came easy to.

“Now, this one,” and she pours a few berries on the table top, “will bring a woman's bleeding, should she wish it.” Sybilla alone of all of them has never wondered why Joleta kept the child, when there are so many ways a child could be lost. She, who made the same choice herself, and made it three times over: three children born to an awkward and uncertain patrimony, when barrenness would have been wisest.

She does not say so to this child, bastard born of incest that he is, but this time she does touch the small shoulder as he writes. Francis saw something in Gabriel that no one else could see; so too did Sybilla understand Joleta. Like calls to like, always. Sybilla's choices were unwise, and sometimes unfair, and if she had been in Joleta's place--. It does not bear thinking of.

Khaireddin looks up at her touch. She marvels sometimes that no one else sees the red-gold of his hair where Francis's is pure gold, the squareness of his chin where Francis's is pointed, the steadiness of his eyes where Francis's dance away. This is Gabriel grown small again, this handsome and capable boy who loves war and music and hunting equally.

“Feverfew,” she says, putting out the next. “I'll wager you know what this one is for.” She wonders sometimes what will become of this boy, it is true. The church will not have him, nor the court, and he is too good and too ambitious to waste as bastards are often wasted, serving Culter or young Kevin Crawford as a steward or factor. Yet he will be wasted as a soldier, too. It would have been kindest, perhaps, not to raise him as family.

To foster him on a family on the estate, apprentice him with a printer in Edinburgh, send him to America to make his own way-- but in doing so they would have been acknowledging that there is nothing of the Crawfords in him, and Sybilla does not think Francis could have borne that, or the implications of that. Her poor, fragile, damaged son, who unlike Joleta has had to live with the choices he has made.

On the whole Sybilla is grateful that Francis married where he did. Philippa has passed both her courage and her good sense on to their daughters. They are not, perhaps, as interesting as Sybilla's children, as her first Francis-- but they are a good deal easier to live with. And Richard, too, has done well; his sons have none of Mariotta's love of drama, but they do not have their father's overly gullible nature, either.

And Khaireddin, whose mother was a whore-- a Scots whore or an Irish one, Sybilla sometimes thinks-- whose father lived by no rules but his own, no matter who his father was. Khaireddin is the most sensible of all of them, his temperament engaging, his nature peaceable. He steps between Kevin and Beatrice when they quarrel like dogs and cats, deflects the worst of Francis's temper, comforts Philippa when comfort is called for.

Sybilla, who loves the boy best of them all, is not blind to the fact that no son of two such parents should be so malleable. Khaireddin is everything the situation demands, whenever it demands it. Richard takes him stag hunting and remarks on his courage; Francis writes music for him and praises his playing. If they wanted something else from him-- viciousness or stupidity or indolence, Sybilla thinks he would oblige, and do so convincingly.

Like recognizes like, which is how Sybilla knew Joleta-- but in Khaireddin she recognizes something else entirely, and bows to his mastery. She loves the child, but she will never trust him.


End file.
